Social Security Bill Work Focus Will Make Life Hard for Mums

Palmerston North, February 20, 2013 – While the
“social obligations” in the government’s Social
Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill
promise to disadvantage children, a number of groups have
highlighted the additional disadvantages women will face
under the benefit reforms, says Barbara Smith of the Home
Education Foundation (HEF).

Under the work focus
provisions of the Bill, mothers will need to work 15 hours
per week once their youngest turns 5 and 30 hours per week
once their youngest turns 14.

“Minister for Social
Development Paula Bennett believes mothers should work
because being jobless is demoralizing,” says Mrs Smith.
“But mothers with children to care for are not
jobless.”

In a press release dated 12th September 2012,
Ms Bennett cited statistics showing that sole parents
receive 23% of the costs of welfare. She said, “We can do
much better than this, by providing more support to sole
parents and others who’ve historically received very
little help to get off welfare.”

“This makes it clear
that her plan to cut welfare spending relies on getting
single mothers away from their children and into the
workforce,” says Mrs Smith. “While many women are happy
to work to support their families, it’s disgraceful that
women with very young children and women who choose the
full-time job of educating their children at home right
through secondary school will be forced into the workplace
under this bill.

“I have heard from hundreds of women
who are concerned that their way of life will be threatened
by this bill.”

It’s no surprise, says Mrs Smith, that
many women’s groups have expressed their concern with the
Bill’s relentless work focus provisions for sole
mothers.

According to the Beneficiary Advisory Service,
the work focus provisions of the Bill “will impact heavily
on young women who are caring for an infant” and the
resulting stress and anxiety will pose a risk to both mother
and child.

The Auckland Women’s Centre “considers that
it is a crucial component of the well-being of our society
that extra restrictions and difficulties are not enshrined
in legislation that will result in limiting a
sole-mother’s ability to provide dedicated, quality
parenting to their children.” Domestic work, they argue,
forms “a normal part of many women’s lives rather than a
deviation from male patterns of employment.”

The
Psychological Society of New Zealand also found the work
focus troubling. “There are many of those who live in
Aotearoa/NZ who contribute in alternative ways e.g. a young
Maori woman called to care for her sick kuia, voluntary
activities for children within a church or a person with a
disability acting as an advocate.”

Te Whaainga Wahine, a
national network advocating the rights of Maori women,
argued that the amendments will compromise the rights of
Maori women to care for, protect, and make decisions in the
best interests of their tamariki, mokopuna and whanau.

The
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom also
believed that the work focus provisions would disadvantage
women. “It will create extra stress for people who should
be work exempt because they are caring for children. The
care of children is not given due importance and this
amendment appears to be a punitive measure for those who
dare to have another child when they are on a
benefit.”

“It’s reasonable to say that the Bill will
cause serious disadvantage to women,” says Mrs
Smith.

Concerned New Zealanders should write, call, and
visit their local MPs and the Select Committee, Mrs Smith
urges.

Tell your friends. Make appointments to see the
Committee members or your local MP.

“Caring for children
and whanau is a real job with real value to society. All
women, including beneficiaries, should be able to do the
work they are called to.”

The Home Education
Foundation has been informing parents for 28 years about the
fantastic opportunity to de-institutionalise our sons and
daughters and to embrace the spiritual, intellectual and
academic freedom that is ours for the taking. Through
conferences, journals, newsletters and all kinds of personal
communications, we explain the vision of handcrafting each
child into a unique individual, complete with virtuous
character, a hunger for service to others, academic acumen
and a strong work ethic. For more information, please visit
www.hef.org.nz or more specifically hef.org.nz/2012/make-a-submission-reject-compulsory-early-education-for-3-year-olds/

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